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Ecological succession and habitat attributes affect the postfire response of a Mediterranean reptile community

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Abstract

Wildfires are recognized as natural disturbances that have shaped landscape structure and ecosystem composition in many regions of the world. As ectotherms, many Mediterranean reptiles are expected to benefit from the thermal quality of open areas created by fires. However, not all the reptile species respond positively to this pattern. We have explored the response to fire of a Mediterranean reptile community in a protected area of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. We visually searched for reptiles at 102 sites, including unburnt, recently burnt (2003), and old burnt (1985–1986) localities. The number of reptiles and species richness was higher at burnt sites, and both were related to several variables of the habitat structure. Accordingly, between the two most common species in recently burnt sites, Podarcis hispanica declined in old fire habitats whereas Psammodromus algirus did not. Snakes did not differ between burnt and unburnt areas, although the ambush predator viper Vipera latastei was found more frequently in unburnt habitats. Our results imply that there are different succession trajectories for Mediterranean reptile species according to their habitat preferences, life history traits, and dietary specialization. The study area has been drastically human-altered in the last 100 years by agriculture, pine reforestation, agricultural abandonment, and wildfires. These land use changes drastically alter the vegetation cover, favoring some reptiles and damaging others, and finally can promote local extinctions of sensitive species to habitat shifts.

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Acknowledgments

We thank R. Márquez, R. Ribeiro, and D. Salvans for field assistance and people of the Sant Llorenç del Munt i l'Obac Natural Park for logistic assistance. M. Casals provided old photographs of study area. David Nesbitt is acknowledged for language editing. X.S. was supported by a Beatriu de Pinós postdoctoral grant from the Government of Catalonia (BP-B1 10211).

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  1. Departament de Biologia Animal, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 645, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Xavier Santos

  2. Departamento de Biología Animal, Universidad de Granada, Av. Fuentenueva s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain

    José Manuel Poquet

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Correspondence to Xavier Santos.

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Communicated by C. Gortázar

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Table S1

Spatial autocorrelation analysis for the number of reptiles per site. For each distance class, minimum and maximum distances (in meters), Moran's I coefficient, standard deviation (SD), and probability of significance are detailed. The correlogram has a Bonferroni-corrected significance of 0.06. (DOC 58 kb)

Table S2

Spatial autocorrelation analysis for species richness per site. For each distance class, Moran's I coefficient, standard deviation (SD), and probability of significance are detailed. The correlogram has a Bonferroni-corrected significance of 0.0006 (DOC 42 kb)

Figure S1

Spatial correlogram of Moran's I coefficients for the number of reptiles per site along a distance axis between pairs of sites. Distance classes (in meters) were selected to maintain a constant number of population pairs for each class (see “Materials and methods” for details). Circles: coefficients significantly different from zero; crosses: nonsignificant coefficients (DOC 94 kb)

Figure S2

Spatial correlogram of Moran's I coefficients for species richness per site along a distance axis between pairs of sites. Distance classes were selected to maintain a constant number of population pairs for each class (see “Materials and methods” for details). Circles: coefficients significantly different from zero before Bonferroni; crosses: nonsignificant coefficients (DOC 95 kb)

Figure S3

Landscape use changes in the study area: a early twentieth century vineyards, b around 1960s pine forest, and c current postfire scrubland. In c, the burnt area is located to the rear of the picture (DOC 510 kb)

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Santos, X., Poquet, J.M. Ecological succession and habitat attributes affect the postfire response of a Mediterranean reptile community. Eur J Wildl Res 56, 895–905 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-010-0387-8

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